Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Climate

The President Won’t Be the Problem for the U.S. at COP

While a Harris victory would no doubt ensure smoother negotiations, there’s still Congress to deal with.

Flags.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Less than a week after election night in the U.S., the United Nations’ annual climate conference begins in Azerbaijan. COP29, as this year’s conference is called, has climate finance and carbon markets on the agenda. It’s no secret that the outcome of the U.S. presidential election could shift the tenor of negotiations significantly on both topics. Everyone knows there’s one candidate who’s better for the climate and one who will be much, much worse.

Even if Harris wins, however, the United States may well continue to shirk its global climate finance obligations. If the U.S. can’t deliver on what it promises at COP29, it may not matter what actually happens there.

Negotiators at COP29 are tasked with setting what’s called the New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance, a goalpost for the amount of cash governments must put up to meet global climate investment needs. Global South countries excluding China have suggested that they require more than $1 trillion per year in external finance to meet their climate targets. An agreed-upon NCQG will also help all countries flesh out the latest iteration of their national climate plans, also known as Nationally Determined Contributions, as required by the Paris climate agreement.

And yet preliminary discussions over the summer were inconclusive, not just on the NCQG target itself but also on which countries are expected to contribute and what kinds of financing (e.g. public, private, loans, grants) will count toward it. More controversially to some climate activists and civil society groups, negotiators are also using COP29 to finalize a framework for the implementation of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which calls for the creation of a global carbon credit market, which countries could use to trade emissions reductions and contribute to each others’ NDCs.

To put it simply: If Donald Trump wins, not much of this will matter. President Biden’s negotiators can still endorse ambitious NCQG and Article 6 targets, but there’s no evidence a second Trump administration will commit to delivering on them. Should Trump win, the U.S. will almost certainly cut itself out of the global climate finance architecture a second time. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plan, authored largely by Trump associates, not only calls for the U.S. to slash global climate and development funding (as Trump already called for in his first term) but also to withdraw from global negotiating fora entirely. In the breach, Trump administration diplomats will likely stress the importance of gas and non-renewable energy technologies (such as carbon capture) with an emphasis on ensuring domestic energy security and affordability, even as they prepare to gut most if not all of the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

A Kamala Harris victory next week will assuredly be much better for both global emissions reductions and the climate diplomacy landscape. While she has outlined no specific proposals for global climate policy in particular, there is also no evidence that she will renege on any U.S. global commitments made in the past four years or attempt to repeal any climate laws.

As president, she will likely preserve President Biden’s key global climate and development policy initiatives, including the Just Energy Transition Partnerships and the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment. She will also likely support the Biden administration’s push to see the multilateral development banks support more investments in climate and development, particularly through mobilizing the private sector. The current World Bank President, Ajay Banga, was nominated by the United States in early 2023 after serving as co-chair of the Partnership for Central America, a private sector-backed economic development initiative launched by Vice President Harris herself as part of her broader engagement with the region. Their shared history suggests that they will continue collaborating on good terms if Harris is elected.

While none of this is directly connected to COP29 (and putting doubts about the efficacy of these programs aside), it speaks to the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to, at the very least, platforming global climate and development issues. But will Harris actually deliver on the U.S.’s commitments to the NCQG or otherwise meaningfully increase the amount of public spending devoted to global climate and development goals? Probably not ― although in that case, Congress will be the more likely culprit, not her.

Attempts to appropriate additional funds for global climate programs are cursed with a severe case of legislative inertia. Congress did not significantly slash funding for global climate priorities during the first Trump presidency, but it also did not raise it much during the Biden presidency. Last year’s bipartisan debt limit negotiations didn’t help, of course. But even in the early Biden presidency, when Democrats had their narrow trifecta, Congress massively undershot Biden’s budget requests for global climate-related priorities. In fiscal year 2022, Congress passed less than half of what Biden requested; since then, presidential requests for global climate spending have ballooned in size, while appropriations have stayed flat.

This divergence reflects a stable short-term equilibrium: The Biden administration can showcase the full range of its commitments and bona fides and blame Congress for its failure to deliver on any of them, while Congress can coast on the spending cap deals it made to avoid government shutdowns. But it also ignores the planet-sized elephant in the room — that there’s been no new spending on mitigating climate change. Regardless of who is president, there’s only so much discretionary funding they can ever reallocate toward priority programs absent additional appropriations.

(Here it seems pertinent to remind everyone that the U.S. has never endorsed the global consensus framework of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” which would mean acknowledging a quasi-legal obligation to provide climate finance to Global South countries, on account of the fact that Congress has never been enthusiastic about this. The chances that anyone changes their tone are slim.)

In summary, even if Harris comes out on top on Tuesday, the U.S. will still be stuck in a holding pattern with respect to its global climate priorities. This puts the Biden administration’s COP29 negotiators in a vise: Pushing for a low NCQG gives other countries ground to criticize the U.S.’s inadequate ambition and care for the Global South relative to its ability to contribute, but pushing for an ambitious NCQG also gives other countries greater reason to criticize the U.S. if it fails to deliver. Ambition was never the problem; it has always been the delivery.

Optimistically, a Harris victory at least prevents the U.S. from being a roadblock to other countries’ climate action. But at a time when major Global North donor countries are cutting their aid budgets, American unwillingness to finance solutions to global climate and development challenges makes the rest of the world more dependent on private capital and, in turn, more vulnerable to market downturns, interest rate hikes, and capital outflows. (Alternatively, it makes Global South countries more dependent on petrostate wealth and Chinese imports for macroeconomic stability, although they may be less able to count on large Chinese capital inflows from here on out.) As expert report after expert report has detailed, climate change mitigation or adaptation simply will not happen at scale across the Global South without substantial new external financing.

Still, in lieu of new financing, a Harris administration could stress that efforts to catalyze private investment in the Global South (including through voluntary carbon markets) and reform global taxation also contribute to global decarbonization. And it could continue to argue that the U.S. is doing its part to decarbonize if it manages to pass more landmark climate and green industrialization laws like the Inflation Reduction Act. But it would be false to argue ― as President Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have done at times, particularly in 2022 ― that the Inflation Reduction Act helps lower the cost of clean tech uptake across the Global South. This is not true — the credit for making clean technology, particularly solar energy, cheaper and more accessible for the Global South goes decisively to China. The U.S. is nowhere close to becoming a major clean technology exporter or a bona fide partner in green industrial transformation for any Global South country, policymakers’ pretensions to the contrary.

One prominent member of Harris’s advisory team, President Biden’s former National Economic Council Director Brian Deese, is trying to change that, advancing ideas like a “Clean Energy Marshall Plan” as an opportunity to deliver on both domestic industrial policy priorities and demands for global leadership vis-a-vis China; his writing exemplifies how American climate diplomacy is being subsumed into national security planning. (Deese is also a Heatmap contributor.) Tactically, this might work in the near-term: The bill to reauthorize the Development Finance Corporation, which would boost the U.S.’s ability to invest in decarbonization-related priorities across the Global South and particularly critical minerals supply chains, cleared the House Foreign Affairs Committee with bipartisan support over the summer. But this is not a strategy that on its own centers the climate and development needs of Global South countries.

So while a Democratic victory next week would certainly be a step toward continued climate action, and while what the Biden administration negotiates at COP29 will at least set a floor for future U.S. commitments (even if that floor is performative), we won’t see a major departure from the status quo unless a Harris administration can convince legislators that American leadership requires a lot more American money.

“We are not going back” ― this much is true. But it would be nice to go forward, too.

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Adaptation

The ‘Buffer’ That Can Protect a Town from Wildfires

Paradise, California, is snatching up high-risk properties to create a defensive perimeter and prevent the town from burning again.

Homes as a wildfire buffer.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The 2018 Camp Fire was the deadliest wildfire in California’s history, wiping out 90% of the structures in the mountain town of Paradise and killing at least 85 people in a matter of hours. Investigations afterward found that Paradise’s town planners had ignored warnings of the fire risk to its residents and forgone common-sense preparations that would have saved lives. In the years since, the Camp Fire has consequently become a cautionary tale for similar communities in high-risk wildfire areas — places like Chinese Camp, a small historic landmark in the Sierra Nevada foothills that dramatically burned to the ground last week as part of the nearly 14,000-acre TCU September Lightning Complex.

More recently, Paradise has also become a model for how a town can rebuild wisely after a wildfire. At least some of that is due to the work of Dan Efseaff, the director of the Paradise Recreation and Park District, who has launched a program to identify and acquire some of the highest-risk, hardest-to-access properties in the Camp Fire burn scar. Though he has a limited total operating budget of around $5.5 million and relies heavily on the charity of local property owners (he’s currently in the process of applying for a $15 million grant with a $5 million match for the program) Efseaff has nevertheless managed to build the beginning of a defensible buffer of managed parkland around Paradise that could potentially buy the town time in the case of a future wildfire.

Keep reading...Show less
Spotlight

How the Tax Bill Is Empowering Anti-Renewables Activists

A war of attrition is now turning in opponents’ favor.

Massachusetts and solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Library of Congress, Getty Images

A solar developer’s defeat in Massachusetts last week reveals just how much stronger project opponents are on the battlefield after the de facto repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Last week, solar developer PureSky pulled five projects under development around the western Massachusetts town of Shutesbury. PureSky’s facilities had been in the works for years and would together represent what the developer has claimed would be one of the state’s largest solar projects thus far. In a statement, the company laid blame on “broader policy and regulatory headwinds,” including the state’s existing renewables incentives not keeping pace with rising costs and “federal policy updates,” which PureSky said were “making it harder to finance projects like those proposed near Shutesbury.”

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Hotspots

The Midwest Is Becoming Even Tougher for Solar Projects

And more on the week’s most important conflicts around renewables.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Wells County, Indiana – One of the nation’s most at-risk solar projects may now be prompting a full on moratorium.

  • Late last week, this county was teed up to potentially advance a new restrictive solar ordinance that would’ve cut off zoning access for large-scale facilities. That’s obviously bad for developers. But it would’ve still allowed solar facilities up to 50 acres and grandfathered in projects that had previously signed agreements with local officials.
  • However, solar opponents swamped the county Area Planning Commission meeting to decide on the ordinance, turning it into an over four-hour display in which many requested in public comments to outright ban solar projects entirely without a grandfathering clause.
  • It’s clear part of the opposition is inflamed over the EDF Paddlefish Solar project, which we ranked last year as one of the nation’s top imperiled renewables facilities in progress. The project has already resulted in a moratorium in another county, Huntington.
  • Although the Paddlefish project is not unique in its risks, it is what we view as a bellwether for the future of solar development in farming communities, as the Fort Wayne-adjacent county is a picturesque display of many areas across the United States. Pro-renewables advocates have sought to tamp down opposition with tactics such as a direct text messaging campaign, which I previously scooped last week.
  • Yet despite the counter-communications, momentum is heading in the other direction. At the meeting, officials ultimately decided to punt a decision to next month so they could edit their draft ordinance to assuage aggrieved residents.
  • Also worth noting: anyone could see from Heatmap Pro data that this county would be an incredibly difficult fight for a solar developer. Despite a slim majority of local support for renewable energy, the county has a nearly 100% opposition risk rating, due in no small part to its large agricultural workforce and MAGA leanings.

2. Clark County, Ohio – Another Ohio county has significantly restricted renewable energy development, this time with big political implications.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow